"The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me."
"Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay."
"Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them."
"The phoenix must burn to emerge."
"I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season."
"And if there is no god?You act as if there is, and it's the same thing."